Life — December 13, 1923 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Shall Holiday Greetings Be Regulated ? By Don Herold 'HE sending of Christmas greetings is a custom out of which the public seems to be getting too much pleasure, and one which is a distinct nuisance to the Post Office Department; therefore, for these two reasons, it is quite possible that the government will take steps the coming year to establish restrictions on the sending of these annual messages of good cheer. The plan now under discussion is that each persen intending to send a Christ- mas greeting to another person shall make application in the preceding July or August for a government permit to send such greeting. One of these ap- plications must be made out for each greeting to be mailed, and you will have to give a lot of mighty good reasons or you will not get a permit. Of course, if you are denied a permit in any par- ticular instance, it will be possible to make an appeal and fight the matter out with the government and perhaps get to send your holiday greeting five or six years later. The whole arrange- ment oughtn’t to make more than six or eight times as much mail as the present volume of holiday greeting mail, but it will scatter the bother out over the entire year, and should do nothing worse than completely wreck the Post Office Department, which is not much good anyway. You will be required to file, for each greeting you plan to mail, a “Holiday Greeting Intention Card and Request for Permission to Transmit in the United States Mails.” August 15 will probably be the deadline for filing. Blanks for these reports may be ob- tained from branches of the govern- ment’s Department of Holiday Greet- ings in the large cities, perhaps. At any rate, they will be hard to get. At the top you will have to declare your friendship for the intended re- cipient of your greeting, before a notary public. No exchange of greetings be- tween mere casual friends will be al- Jowed. You must not merely think you have a friendly attitude towards the party of the second part—you must have proof. Here some typical which are apt to be asked: “Has the party of the second part sent you holiday greetings for at least seven consecutive years?” are questions “Were you at one time sweethearts?” “Have you loaned money to, or bor- rowed from, party of the second part?” “Has he named any of his children after you?” “Have you ever had ptomaine or other poisoning with the party of the second part from the same dish or bottle?” “Would it be possible for your so- called friendship to go on if you were denied permission to send him the Holi- day Greeting for which this application for mailing permit mad (Be careful how you answer this question. The government will stand for no fool- ishness, and will allow no greeting to be sent unless it will positively m the culmination of a beautiful frie ship.) “What sentiment do you intend to express on greeting, if any?” The government will and check over cards, sometime come all your Christn within twenty or thirty years after you receive them, t make sure that permits were issued all of them at the other end of the line Thus will another of life's gayeties be roped off with red tape by our mor- bidly paternal Uncle Sam. Still, Holiday Greetings do trash up the house to beat the band. around Environment - HAT makes minded ? “He was raised in a New York apart- ment house.” him so narrow- “WHAT IS YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARD THE CONVENTIONS, COLONEL GLUB! The Colonel: ov, 1 QUIT GOIN’ TO ’EM SID PROHIBITION, MISS—YOU RUN TOO BIG A CHANCE OF GETTIN’ POISONED, comicbooks.com